Puerto Vallarta - Paradise

Mañana at the dock in Paradise Village

As always - To remove yourself from this mailing list all you have to do is hit the reply button and type "Count me out, vagabond".

But for now try singing along... "All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go”.... Okay, no jet plane, but how about "I'm on the road again”.... No? Then "Sailing, sailing over the bounding main”... That's better. But maybe "Wasting away again in Margaritaville ..." hits just the right note.

Andrea and I are off on another "adventure at sea" and this year's starting point is Puerto Vallarta, Mexico where we left the boat floating peacefully at the Paradise Village marina while we weathered the Pacific hurricane season in sunny CA. Golf, farming, farmer's markets and, yes, income taxes, are only our summer vocations. For November and December we are sailors and this year we expect to cover about 1400 miles under sail as we move the boat from Puerto Vallarta, MX to Barillas in El Salvador.

If you'd like to follow along on this adventure I highly recommend the free Google Earth program that will allow you to zoom in on some of the prettiest beaches on the Pacific Coast. (Even if you don't follow our trip it's always interesting to see your own neighborhood from space). When the boat actually starts moving I'll try to provide some Lat/Longs (Latitudes and Longitudes) that will let you see exactly where we are in living color. AND, if we can ever get the camera working on a regular basis I will try to include some photos. Just type Google Earth into your search engine.

We arrived back in Mexico on October 21. The first three days were devoted to un-storing the boat, which is all the things we did last June only in reverse. Sails back on, running rigging replaced, engines commissioned, dinghy pumped up, lots of cleaning and polishing... and all in 95 degree heat with 95 percent humidity. Seems Mexico is having an "exceptionally" hot October. We do try to stay hydrated, but there may be a limit to the number of beers that can be consumed in a day. We haven’t found that limit, but it may exist… theoretically. The pool helps.

We are reconnecting with other cruisers we met last year in Vallarta and other anchorages on our trip south from San Diego. Since their plans and boats will take them in all directions from here (except east, see the aforementioned Google Earth). Many of them will sail north to revisit the Sea of Cortez or to return to CA, OR, WA and Canada while others will sail south at a faster pace than us, and we will not likely see many of them again. For right now it’s a large party of “where are you going, when are you leaving, how long will you be sailing, what do you need to fix before you can go?” people.

The weather cooled perceptibly by the weekend (October 25) and made everyone much happier. We have only two items hanging over our heads before we can actually cast off. First, of course, is the fact that our insurance agent won’t let us move south until after November 1. That is the official end of hurricane season and despite the fact that we can all see that there are no Pacific storms right now EVERYONE is waiting for November 1 to start moving (lest you hit a whale and find the insurance company wiggling out of the repayment because you were somewhere you weren’t supposed to be. The second item is a problem with our solar panels. Right now they are not properly charging our batteries. The boat is run entirely on solar power (lights, radio, navigation equipment, refrigeration, engine batteries) so without them we are lost. The fact that ours aren’t working should not be a problem… for an electrician. I, on the other hand, am not an electrician, and until I can find an English speaking one I will continue to have this “problem” for at least a few more days.

We did take a vacation from our vacation to go on a snorkeling trip to the southern beaches of Banderas Bay. Banderas is the 3rd largest bay in North America (yes, I can name the others) and has over 120 miles of shoreline. We booked a trip on a large motor catamaran that offered breakfast, lunch, snorkeling, beach party, and an open bar for the entire 8 hour trip, along with a cruise past Vallarta and a running history of the bay. Snorkeling in Banderas and Mexico is definitely NOT to be confused with the spectacular snorkeling in the Virgin Islands, but the water was warm (85 degrees), filled with fish, and had reasonable visibility.

We also got a quick history lesson about Puerto Vallarta from the time the Spanish entered the bay over 400 years ago. The most interesting part of the lesson was when our guide pointed out the 5 cornerstones of Mexican culture that exist in almost every town in Mexico. We had seen all of these in our travels, but we had never thought of them as any more than “what’s there”, certainly not as part of the culture. Each town has a church and right next to it a city hall, a nearby flea market, a school, and a plaza (usually with arches). The church is there because of the importance of religion (in this case the Catholic religion) in Mexican culture. The city hall because this is the power, and the flea market that is the economic heart of the Mexican culture. (In many small towns there are no stores other than the “tiendas” (very small food stores) and the occasional “ferreteria” or hardware store. There are no clothing stores, shoe shops, record (CDs?) stores, etc. (all of the stores we would expect to find on Main Street in any US town. All of the goods these stores supply at home are traditionally sold via the flea markets throughout Mexico. The schools are for the children who are a large part of the Mexican population and, finally, the plazas which are the very center of the Mexican social life. The plazas are the place for to meet your friends, sit with your family, play with others, and just enjoy watching life. They are the center of the community. We have found that every time we wander into a new village we too immediately seek out the plazas.

Back to the task at hand. Today is La Dia de Muertes throughout Mexico and tomorrow is our planned departure date. We have already sampled our Pan de Muertes (baked only for this one day each year) so I guess that damn battery is our last obstacle. The first few stops are merely anchorages along the Pacific (Ipala, Chemela, Carreyes) so no internet access for at least a week. Check Google Earth at Lat 20 41.5 /Long 105 17.5 for Paradise Village. Then move down the coast to Lat 20 14 for Ipala, 19 34 for Chamela and 19 26.5 for Careyes. No Longitudes given, just move along the shore line.

Adventures in Mexico

We were sitting in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle wondering how to solve our motor problem when the idea hit me… ignore the motor and rent a car. Let’s see the world while we’re still young. So that is exactly what we did. We called the local Hertz people (here they are called Amigo) and rented a small, underpowered, high mileage junker for a trip into the mountains of Mexico. Gualadajara (second largest city in Mexico, population four million) was our destination. We took along a cooler of beer (in case every second building along the way wasn’t a tacqueria), filled the tank with some inexpensive Mexican gas, grabbed the map and headed east.

The first very pleasant surprise was that as we headed uphill the temperature seemed to drop accordingly. Guadalajara is at about 5000 feet and the humidity that had been killing us for the past two weeks seemed to disappear as we climbed. Although daytime temps were still in the 80’s the relief was dramatic. Depending on whom you ask Gualadajara is either 3 hours or 6 hours from Vallarta. For us it was at least six. We had been told to skip the free road and pay the tolls, but our logic was that we wanted to see more of Mexico. We took the free road. We saw all of Mexico. The road was good, two lanes, well paved, and it went up, down, around, over, back around, and through every small hill and mountain from Vallarta to Gualadajara. We finally figured out that the toll road was the 3 hour trip, a lot less miles, a lot straighter.

Our first destination was the town of Tequila. In addition to being the reputed site of the first license to make the stuff in Mexico Tequila also has an abundance of TEQUILA TOURS!!! We checked into a beautiful, little hotel right on the main square and enjoyed an evening on the town. Tequila is a lot like the towns in Napa and Sonoma. Essentially this is a farm community where the primary crop is the Blue Agave plant. After a while the process of making the Tequila, tasting tequilas, comparing tequila became as big a part of the community as growing the agave. There were many, many tequila tasting bars and small tequila shops. We took the tour at Jose Cuervo, the oldest and largest distiller. Exactly like a wine tour from the crush to the fermentation, bottling, and aging through to the tasting room where (en espanol) we were shown how to sniff, swirl, look for the legs, taste, etc. One difference, of course, after the 3^rd tequila you had a much better buzz than your average pinot noir.

One thing that struck us on the wine tour was the weight that rules carry in Mexico. The very first announcement on the tour was that ABSOLUTELY no cameras, cell phone videos, etc. would be allowed inside the factory. They announced this twice. Spanish and English. At the first stop, the unloading of agave, EVERYONE on the tour started taking pictures, and they continued to do so throughout the tour. Go figure.

Tequila was also the first indication that our Spanish language skills were not progressing as well as we thought. We now found ourselves in places where no one spoke any English at all. In Vallarta the waiters, bus drivers, merchants and hotel clerks all spoke some English, but now we were on our own and our Spanglish was not going to cut it. Yes, we could still get a beer, but only if we could see the beer sign from where we were standing. God forbid we should need directions. Some word games: In Spanish the two words ”jeugo” (game) and “jugo” (juice) sound pretty much the same. Of course I hardly ever mix up game and juice at home so I might have been a little careless in my pronunciation, BUT… we are sitting at breakfast. WeI have just asked for coffee, scrambled eggs and bacon (all in impeccable espanol), and apparently some “orange games”. You think the waiter could help me out? No. He looks like I just ordered a slice of green, moon cheese, stares at me, looks confused, calls another waiter for help (not an English speaking waiter by the way), and still they can’t figure out the remote possibility that I am looking for orange juice with my breakfast. I gotta keep practicin’. “Topos” are tortilla chips, “topes” are bumps in the road. I have also tried to order road bumps with salsa with little success. I do tell myself that part of the problem is that Spanish is such a fast language, but apparently it is just my brain that is on slow.

All over the country they have installed speed bumps (topes) in lieu of hiring cops to enforce speed limits. I have now driven over thousands and thousands of speed bumps. They are everywhere. If you are going 30 miles per hour you will come to a 20 mph speed bump. If you are driving 60 you will come to a 40 mph bump. No matter what your speed, no matter where you are, count on the bump just ahead. Even in our small car they had the ability to launch the car several inches off the ground. The bump was what you got when the car bottomed out on the non-existent shock absorbers. The second most prolific business in Mexico (after taquerias) is the ubiquitous “Llantera”, the tire repair shop. There are several in every small village and most are located immediately adjacent to the speed bump. Warnings? Of course they warn you about the speed bump. There are actually two ways. On the slower roads there are usually two white rocks stacked next to the speed bump. Assuming you see these in time (and assuming the local llantera hasn’t removed them completely) you should be able to slow down in time for the bump. At higher speed they put up a sign (right at the bump) that says “Reductor de velocidade”. Let’s just say that the first few times I saw that sigh at 60mph I was still translating that into English when the car left the ground. I’m a lot quicker now.

We drove on to Guadalajara the next day (on the toll road) and stayed in a smaller suburb of Tlaquepaque. This town had two squares and a beautiful “avenue of artisans”. It was lots of high end crafts, silver, restored antiques, art, paintings and sculptures. All of these along a street that was restored homes with courtyards and high walls. As you walked into each shop or restaurant you found yourself in a private park with flowers, trees, fountains and, of course, art for sale. A very nice experience. Next to Tlaquepaque was the town of Tonala. We were lucky enough to visit Tonala on the day of their very famous market. Largest open air market you can possibly imagine. Everything for sale and, I think, thousands of vendors. Tlaquepaque was also where we saw the police out in force, armed with automatic rifles and ready to fight off the revolution. The reason? Soccer game between Guadalajara and Monterey. Bars were packed with people, overflow ran out the doors and into the streets, and most of the fans were men drinking beer. Same as the NFL except we don’t usually see the police in riot gear with machine guns even for the Giants/Patriots.

Guadalajara is a major city and we were content to ride the tourist bus around town and have the historic sites explained to us. One exception was the Governor’s Chambers where we were escorted through the premises by a native Mesquite Indian... who spoke seven languages fluently (including Japenese). The building was the meeting hall for the state parliament for many years, and Guadalajara was the site of much of the political turmoil in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Two incredible murals by the Mexican painter Orozco reflected the politics of Mexico and the progress of independence in this country. Our guide had a wealth of knowledge and an unbelievable enthusiasm for the history of his country and his people.

Enough of Mexico for now, but I did want to finish with the crocodiles. (Picture attached). We stopped in La Manzanilla when we returned to the Pacific coast of Mexico. At the end of a small street there was a river that was cut off from the sea by a sand bar/beach across the mouth. La Zona de Crocodilos. I walked up to the fence at the end of the street, and scared the piss out of myself when I looked into the lagoon and saw 10 to 15 of the largest crocodiles I had ever imagined. Big suckers. 15 feet long, huge bellies and tails, and heads with at least 3 feet of teeth and scales and eyes. Oh, yeah. The eyes were looking at me! If I had been asked to imagine the biggest crocodile in the world I never would have imagined one that big, and there were a dozen of them. Absolutely the scariest things I have ever seen. I will never swim in fresh water in Mexico, ever!

Long e-mail for not much travel at this end, but we wanted people to know what we were up to and that we miss all of you.

La Cruz de Huanacaxtle

We finally pulled the plug on Marina Vallarta and sailed across Banderas Bay to La Cruz. The length of the trip (12 mi) and our destination in La Cruz (we visited there often last winter) were hardly monumental, but it was more the idea of slipping the lines and going somewhere, anywhere that appealed to us. We did have a memorable evening in Vallarta before we slipped out. We chose Brando’s, an Aptos Club like bar that was having their weekly BBQ for our last night. Conveniently Brando’s was located right at the end of our dock. We were well into the evening when the guest chef lit the wood BBQ with a giant, propane flame thrower. Looked a little like a WWII movie just before the tank disappears. BBQ produced a great burger, however, and the entertainment was just beginning. For the next hour we were treated to dueling mariachi bands. Since we were the only bar with much activity both bands chose the same venue for their nightly concert. First the Mexican polka mariachis from one band, then the mariachi ballads from the other band. Back and forth, entertaining, and all the while we were trying to pick a favorite. The winner emerged when one of the mariachis switched to Credence Clearwater. Hard to beat “Who’ll Stop the Rain” on an accordion.

The following morning we sailed out of Vallarta and across the Bay to a rolling anchorage, but at least we were at sea. We find ourselves managing about an hour and a half of work on the boat each morning before the heat hits us and then we go sailing. We have had some perfect morning sails, mile after mile with no sail changes and the boat flying across the water (at least as much as you call traveling at 8 mph “flying”). And every afternoon like clockwork the winds pick up to 20-25 mph and the water froths with short choppy swells. Then we practice reefing the sails to slow everything down a little.

We spent four nights anchored out taking advantage of the cooler evening breezes and the privacy of boat at anchor before we decided to head into Marina la Cruz for some company with the other boats and sailors. Unlike our previous visit in December there are few people (touristas) in La Cruz in May. Both here and Vallarta we noted that everything is much quieter, there are fewer Americans, and things move at a much slower pace. We dined one night in old Vallarta at a very highly recommended restaurant (Repollo Rojo, The Red Cabbage) and we were the only two customers they had for the evening. Food and service were great. We have also had cocktails at a mirador (view bar sitting on the cliffs) in La Cruz and lunch at Senor BonBons where again we were the only customers. Quiet.

We are still trying to solve our motor problems and that is keeping us in the Bay for longer than we had intended. The solution may ultimately be to return to the US in June and smuggle new parts back to Mexico during the summer. With better planning we might get the right parts this time.

As I type this note we are trying to arrange a car rental that will allow us to spend a few days off the boat exploring more of Mexico. We would like to drive to Guadalajara and Tequila and maybe Tepic to see more of the Mexican mainland and to get away from the coast and into the higher elevations. I am indeed a true Californian at this point because I am so accustomed to our low humidity at home that I find the combination of heat and humidity to be stifling. My east coast relatives would laugh.

The picture attached is a view from El Faro (the Lighthouse) overlooking Marina Vallarta. At the top, center of the picture you can see our little catamaran bobbing peacefully among the mega yachts.

Hasta Manana,
Tom and Andrea

Yatista Two Step

Buenos dias, amigos. In case we forgot to tell you we have begun our spring/summer sailing trip, and this is the first of our e-mails to let everyone know what we are doing. As usual you can just click reply and tell me you could care less about our “vacation”, and we will drop you from this mailing list.

We flew from San Jose to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on April 29 to pick up sailing where we left off last winter when we went home to work for a few months. Our trip was delayed slightly because I insisted on waiting until after the Apple City Amateur before we could leave town. From my point of view the wait was well worth it because I am now the reigning 2008 Apple City Net Champion. Yes, I won the tournament with a nice 75 in the final round. I am a happy golfer, if not a happy sailor. Andrea has not yet shared my enthusiasm for this accomplishment, but I am sure that if I keep telling her all about the round she will grow to appreciate the grandeur of the award.

If you want a carefree vacation I have a piece of advice… Don’t take a boat with you. We have been in Mexico for a week now, and we are enjoying everything about Mexico except the sailing. Why you might ask? Because the boat has had one problem after another, and we are still cleaning, repairing, ordering parts and paying $$. None of this sounds like swimming, partying, exploring or sailing does it?

We are doing what I call the Yatista Two Step. This is the popular boating dance that goes two steps forward, one step (or more) back. We arrived to find that all of the work scheduled for February (repairs from last year’s adventure) had yet to be started as promised. In addition the very valuable lower drive shaft for our motor which we had painstakingly smuggled into Mexico in a golf bag was the lower drive shaft for someone else’s motor, certainly not ours. Wrong part, no solution available, no motor. Well, only one motor. Because we are a catamaran we do have another motor tucked away in the other hull, and it was this second motor which was going to allow us to sail away even with a less than complete propulsion system. Alas, when we dropped the boat in the water the “good motor” failed to start.

After some emergency repairs to allow us to get to the marina it took us another two days to find the electrical short which had caused this problem. And finally (because I know some of you have already nodded off) we discovered that a part from the “good motor” had disappeared over the winter. We mysteriously lost the choke lever from our unlocked motor well which also caused the motor not to work . Backup motor to the rescue again, but that backup motor looks woefully incomplete without a drive shaft, choke lever and whatever else we will cannibalize from it in the next few weeks.

We also discovered that we made a significant error in judgment leaving the boat in a working yard for the winter. The decks are stained and filthy and they are taking lots of elbow grease and rubbing compound to clean up. Andrea is headed up the mast tomorrow to try to clean the 50 or 60 feet of the boat that we can’t reach easily. Of course the cleaning might not be so bad if it weren’t 90/95 every day. That’s 90 degrees and 95% humidity. Tengo calor.

So what else have we been doing our first week in Mexico? We had a very nice hotel room overlooking the marina for the first 3 nights (pool included), and we have enjoyed some fantastic Mexican bars and restaurants. Our old favorite Victor’s still offers $1.50 beers (free shot of tequila with every beer), we found Brando’s (home of the Jumbo Double Margarita for $2.00) and, lest you think all we do is drink here in Mexico, we discovered El Coleguita which serves fish soup, large seafood dinners (think 30 or more shrimp), dessert, Kahlua and cream AND free tequila for under $10.00. Hard to beat a place that puts a fresh bottle of tequila on the table for the two of us. Next week we are definitely ON THE WAGON.
Jay, Linda, David and Angela… we had breakfast on Sunday with Fox who owns Café Roma where we had lunch with you last December in Viejo Vallarta. He was dining alone and shared his table with us in a crowded restaurant.

We will be out of Marina Vallarta by the end of the week and if all goes well we will be sailing south for the next 30 days. We expect to visit Mexico’s Gold Coast with stops at Chemela, Barra de Navidad, Tenecatita, and perhaps Zihuatenejo along with several smaller towns and bays. Our goal is still the Panama Canal, but now we are discussing how to get there sailing only two months at a time and trying to avoid both the summer heat and the prospect of hurricanes. Minor adversities are behind us. The world is our oyster and we are off.

Santa Cruz, CA

By the time we get around to sending this e-mail I suspect we will already be home. We fly back to California this afternoon (Jan 5). At the moment we are sitting in a quiet bar next to the Marina Vallarta toasting our ”last beers in Mexico” (unless, of course, the airport has a bar). We have hauled the boat, stowed all of our gear, stripped off the sails and running rigging, and put Mañana away for the winter. Four months of work ahead of us before we return in May to continue our trip south.

Christmas week in Mexico was a kick. We had a pot luck dinner at Philo’s bar in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. Philo provided 170 lbs of turkey and about 160 guests brought appetizers, desserts, casseroles, salads, etc. The guests were cruisers like us, expatriates living in La Cruz, tourists who had wandered into La Cruz for the holidays, and various bar flies. We sat with a couple from Canada who lived in a RV in the surf town of Sayulita, about 15 miles north of La Cruz. Entertainment was the house band led by aging rocker Philo, a spoon player, an aging and humorous washboard musician, a great Mexican saxophonist, and many “guest musicians”. The real holiday treat occurred after dinner, however. At about 7PM kids from all over town lined up at the door and Santa distributed gifts to every kid ( toddlers to teens) who came in. Kids lined up down the block with their parents waiting to see Santa. Over 400 Christmas gifts were distributed absolutely free, compliments of Philo and his friends. A very nice Christmas indeed. Not that we are creatures of habit, but we also found our way back to Philo’s for our New Years Eve celebration a week later.

Putting the boat away in Puerto Vallarta gave us a chance to explore still another marina. We sailed down to Puerto Vallarta from La Cruz to haul on January 2, and since we weren’t flying out until January 5 we got a hotel room for our last 3 days in Mexico. (Attached photo is view from hotel room). Each morning and evening we got to take a pleasant walk past all of the shops, restaurants, and bars on our way to and from the boatyard. We have a favorite place that we will recommend highly. Victor’s Café offers $1.50 beers that include a shot of tequila with every beer you order. The food is good, and Victor works the place morning, noon and night (frequently buying additional shots for the guests so he can drink a toast with them). This quickly became our favorite after work spot (the work being stowing and cleaning the boat) when we had dinner with 7 free shots of tequila AND free desserts.

This trip has taken us from San Diego to Cabo to La Paz to Mazatlan to Puerto Vallarta with some stops in between. Warm weather, sunshine, relaxing evenings, new friends, new places, a new culture. We got remote anchorages as well as the larger tourist meccas of Mexico and we enjoyed both. Our Spanish is improving (although I can’t actually say that in Spanish) and we are becoming very comfortable in Mexico. Still we want to keep moving towards the Panama Canal and the trip east to the Caribbean and the Bahamas. May cannot come soon enough, but between now and then it will be home for work. How will we survive the bitter cold of Santa Cruz, CA?

Banderas Bay

Our friends from home (Jay, Linda, David and Angela) had planned a vacation in Puerto Vallarta for December so we sailed south from La Cruz de Huanacaxtle to the marina at Nuevo Vallarta so we could join them for a few days. Staying at the marina we were only a half mile from their time share, and we got all of the amenities of the Grand Mayan Resort (including golf, pools, water slides, swim up bars, and restaurants) as our reward. The marina was located next to a dolphin exhibit so each day we also got to watch the dolphins being trained to do their incredible acrobatics. We also got our first experience taking true landlubbers to sea when we invited everyone for a sail on the Bay. We headed out on a true Gilligan’s Island type adventure aboard Mañana. The 3 hour tour to Mismaloya and back was calm and sunny, but both David and Jay quickly jumped ship when we got back to the dock, and I don’t think either of them are going sailing again any time soon. Mal de mer the French call it and green is the color. No one actually got sick but there was certainly a lot of whining about the slow pace and the rolling seas.

 

Andrea’s daughter (Michal Ann) and her husband (Mohammed) also joined us for a week’s vacation aboard, and we set out to explore some of the other destinations around the Bay as well as to visit Viejo Vallarta, the older tourist sections of the city. We sometimes complain that places like PV are a little to “touristy”, but that is what provides the entertainment. There was plenty of shopping, pleasant walks along the malecon, quick beer stops, and some great restaurants. Although PV is considered a little expensive by Mexican standards we were still paying a fraction of the costs we would have paid at home and getting some wonderful meals.  

 

We took a bus trip (actually 3 buses) to Boca de Tomatlan along the southern coast of Banderas Bay. The road ends at Tomatlan so from there we took a panga (Mexican Boston Whaler) to the remote town of Yelapa. Yelapa is a small cove on the southern coast that is only accessible by boat, but is home to a few hundred people. This is a beautiful beach with a steep shoreline and rolling breakers so we were happy to be on the small water taxi rather than trying to bring our own boat close to the beach.

  I was particularly struck by the town water system and I have attached a picture of the water system at the Bar Manguitas in Yelapa where we had lunch. In fact all of the water to the village came from similar hoses and pumps with the hoses winding through the tree tops.

Our return to Tomatlan via panga was on a crowded water taxi with about 20 people which I thought might be a few too many bodies for this small boat. I happened to turn around to see the boat driver bless himself with the sign of the cross just before he hit the throttle. Gracias de Dios for the safe trip. A bit later the bus driver on the city route did him one better.  When the bus stalled at one stop he left the bus, crawled under the rear wheel somewhere, and magically started the bus from under there. Must have been a hidden key. Mexican travel has been filled with “ordinary, but out of the ordinary” incidents like these.

 

Michal Ann and Mohammed have sailed with us before, and they were quite happy to sail the Bay and to spend a few nights at anchor when we revisited La Cruz.  We also took another side trip by bus to Sayulita where we enjoyed the beaches, bars, and shops. Sayulita is a very attractive surf town with a beautiful, wide sand beach for strolling. 

   

Days have turned lazy and our only sailing is day trips on the bay. We did sail out to the Tres Marietas islands (20 miles) and had an incredible day of sailing and whale watching. We spotted at least 20 whales and many of them were within a few hundred feet of the boat. At one point we had four fast moving whales headed directly towards the boat, but about 150 feet away they dove and reappeared on the other side of us. Andrea spends a lot of time telling me which way to turn the boat to get closer to these behemoths , but sometimes the whales swim to windward and I can’t get closer, and sometimes I am quite close enough, thank you. The humpbacks are just now returning to the bay for their winter stay.

 

Did you know: The whales mate in the early winter months, migrate north in the spring and summer, and then return south the following year to give birth in the warmer waters. The locals say that since they are born here all of the whales are Mexican.

Christmas is just 5 days away and we are still in shorts, dining outdoors at night, and swimming during the day. We hear it’s a little cooler in Santa Cruz and new England, but we do feel the chill now that the temps are in the low 70’s some days.  Christmas dinner with other cruisers will be a pot luck at a local bar that supplies the turkey for free if we bring a plate to pass. We’ll be there with bells on.

Merry Christmas to all…

San Blas to La Cruz

Yes, I have been bad, but not at sailing (at which I am getting a lot of experience). Bad at writing and keeping in touch with those who think we are in danger out here (which we are not). Last e-mail was Mazatlan on the Pacific coast of Mexico, and we’ve covered some ground (water) since then. We are currently in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. This is a small town on Banderas Bay. Banderas is the 2nd largest bay on the Pacific coast and is better known as the home to Puerto Vallarta. La Cruz is about 10 miles north of PV. At this point we have covered close to 1600 miles at an average speed (I use that term loosely) of 5 miles per hour.

We got a good weather report so we sailed from Mazatlan on December 4 in good winds and flat seas. This was a welcome change from the choppy, rolling seas we had been experiencing for several weeks along the Baja, in the Sea of Cortez, and on the crossing to Mazatlan. The first leg was an overnight sail leaving Mazatlan at daybreak and we arriving at Isla Isabella dawn the next day. Isla Isabella is a small island about 40 miles off shore and a quick survey of the island (this is a bird sanctuary, think white rocks, think what caused the white rocks) and the exposed anchorage led us to believe we could find a better spot by continuing on to San Blas as long as we had several hours of daylight left. We found a great anchorage in a broad, palm tree lined Mantanchen Bay near San Blas that was both scenic and calm, and we congratulated ourselves on a job well done. The scenery here is decidedly tropical and very pretty. The next morning we motored into the estuary at San Blas  and headed ashore for check in with the Port Captain and to do some well deserved bar hopping.

San Blas is a sleepy little town that never got past the hippie, surfer, remote vacation themes. Dirt and cobblestone streets crisscross the town, but there are also many small tiendas, taco stands, 4 table restaurants, and watering holes.  The town square is a lovely, landscaped flagstone square dominated by the church on one side and a variety of shops and restaurants around the remaining perimeter. 

I particularly liked the San Blas Social Club. This small bar had old jazz and country record albums on the walls, and the bartender would play any of them you requested. Music was “eclectic” and entertaining all afternoon and the beers were cheap. We even met two guys from Santa Cruz sitting at the bar who had “retired” to San Blas several years ago. I didn’t remember them, but they had frequented McCarthy’s and were very familiar with the Aptos Club. I always wondered where the Aptos Club clientele had disappeared. We also met a young Russian woman at the Social Club who had jumped ship a few days earlier when the sail boat she was crewing on was struck by lightning. San Blas was to be her new home if she could stand the no-see-ums. Fortunately we had still been in Mazatlan during that same lightning storm, and we again thanked whatever forces have been watching over us on this trip.

December 12 is a huge celebration here for the Virgin of Guadalupe and San Blas was our first exposure to the religious processions that run for several days preceding the feast. (We later saw the large procession to the cathedral on the 12th when we were in Puerto Vallarta). The church on the square was the destination for hordes of small children carrying candles in the procession and apparently recess occurs shortly after reaching the church.  It was a crowded and festive evening. We also spent a pleasant hour on the square with a fellow who was the unofficial harbor master of San Blas having moved there 40 years ago to go fishing. Several cruisers also stopped by and we ended up in a nearby taco bar for dinner.

Puerto Vallarta beckoned so we again hauled anchor and headed for another interim stop in Chacala. Nothing there except a very picturesque anchorage and a half dozen palapa restaurants on the beach. This is a Mexican vacation destination, and it was very quiet on this night. Very, very pretty and very pleasant.
The trip from Chacala to Banderas Bay started in flat seas and no wind, but our reward was whales and dolphins. We came upon 3 humpbacks basking on the surface, and we got to within 50 feet of them floating with sails down and motors off. We just sat there for about an hour as they spouted, rolled, and lolled about in the sun. Beautiful.

A bit later we were startled to see the seas frothing ahead of us. We had come upon a large group of dolphins herding fish. Many hundreds of dolphins jumping and circling the fish who were also jumping and circling (for much different reasons). The winds picked up substantially around noon and we found 20 knots and sunny sailing for the last 4 hours of the trip. We rounded Punta Mita at the north end of the bay with huge rollers breaking across the reefs. We had originally planned to anchor at the first available place in Banderas Bay (Punta Mita) but the winds were so good that we sailed on another 15 miles to La Cruz.  La Cruz is another cobblestone street town that is just about to bust loose with development (new marina scheduled for completion in 2008) so we were very happy to get here in time to see the still decidedly Mexican town before the tourists discover it. Dinner at Ana Bananas Sunday BBQ with open mike night was a great introduction to La Cruz. At least 6 different groups/single artists performed while we were there for dinner.

Did you know: San Blas, Mexico was the subject of Henry Longfellow's last poem "The Bells of San Blas"? You could look it up.

Next stop Puerto Vallarta where friends and family will meet us and keep us occupied pretty much through Christmas.